System Failure Causes Homelessness

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Everyone has gone without something at some point in their lives. Maybe new clothes, cell phone, cable TV, but how many have gone without a place that they can call home? It was estimated that during 2009 on any given night there was 664,414 people staying in a shelter somewhere in the United States (Khadduri & Culhane, 2010a). Through 2009, 1.56million different people were recorded to have used an emergency housing shelter (Khadduri& Culhane, 2010a). These numbers do not account for those who did not use emergency housing shelters, but were defined as homeless. The legal definition of homelessness one would have to review the McKinney-Veto act of 1987, it states “An individual who lacks a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence” and places that are not meant to be permanent places of residency such as public space (1987). The history is a long and expansive one that extends well before the 20th century, but this essay will focus on post 1900. In modern society, it can be inferred that economic crisis’s, institutional reintegration (mentally ill, prison system) failure, and reintegration of Veterans are primary culprits of American homelessness. This essay seeks to explore the homelessness through causes, veteran specific issues, and sociological paradigms such as functionalism, symbolic interactionism, and conflict theory, while purposing strategies to solve this social problem.

Basis for Homelessness

For most Americans, homelessness is an abstract and foreign idea, but in reality it isn’t. People walk by this inequality on their way to work and ignore those who are pleading for loose change. There are multiple reason why this social travesty exists, not just one. The general public’s opinion and researchers...

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... Affairs. (2010). The 2009 annual homeless assessment report to congress. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.

Lee, B. A., Jones, S. H., & Lewis, D. W. (1990, September). Public beliefs about the causes of homelessness. Social Forces,69(1), 253-265.

Lee, B. A., Tyler, K. A., & Wright, J. D. (2010, March 15). The new homelessness revisited. Annual Review of Sociology, 36, 501-521.

Marger, M. (2011). Social inequality: patterns and processes. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

McKinney, S.B., & Vento, B. U.S. Senate, (1987). Mckinney and vento act (US Code Title 42 USC Sec. 11302). Washington, DC: Government Printing Office. Retrieved from http://uscode.house.gov

State of Michigan. In Michigan state housing development authority. Retrieved March 29, 2011, from http://www.michigan.gov/mshda/

Ritzer, G. (2008). Modern sociological theory. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

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